Bahá’í Administration
Letters from Shoghi Effendi, Guardian of the Bahá’í Cause
Supreme Court of Justice is under legitimate suspicion, and where religious fanaticism pursues minorities and controls power, a state of affairs prevails which is not calculated to insure the development and well-being of the inhabitants. The petitioners have suffered a serious denial of justice the direct responsibility for which rests on the authorities of ‘Iráq. The fact that this denial of justice could not be prevented or immediately made good was due to the weakening of the Mandatory Power’s control in ‘Iráq. The Mandatory attempted, but in vain, to redress the injury done to the petitioners by using the means of influence at its disposal under the régime set up by the 1922 Treaty vis-á-vis King Feisal and the ‘Iráq Government. These efforts would not appear to correspond fully to the engagements resulting from the British Government’s declaration, which was approved by the Council on September 27, 1924, and renewed by the British Government in 1926, whereby the Treaty of Alliance between the British Government and ‘Iráq ‘was to insure the complete observance and execution in ‘Iráq of the principles which the acceptance of the mandate was intended to secure.’”
This grave censure pronounced by the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations on the administration of justice and the general conduct of affairs in ‘Iráq, as well as the association of the humiliation afflicting Bahá’u’lláh’s sacred dwelling-place with the obligations implied in the Treaty of Alliance binding the Governments of Great Britain and ‘Iráq, not only proclaim to the world the enhanced prestige of that hallowed and consecrated spot, but testify as well to the high sense of integrity that animates the members of the League’s honored Commission in the discharge of their public duties. In their formal reply to the Bahá’í petitioners, the members of the Permanent Mandates Commission have, with the sanction of the Council of the League of Nations, issued this most satisfactory declamation: “The Permanent Mandates Commission, recognizing the justice of the complaint made by the Bahá’í Spiritual Assembly of Baghdád, has recommended to the Council of the League such action as it thinks proper to redress the wrong suffered by the petitioners.” A similar passage inserted in the report of the Finnish Representative to the Council of the League runs as follows: “The Commission has also considered a petition from the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of ‘Iráq, a community
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